F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

1896-1940American

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was
born of Irish-American stock in 1896 in St Paul, Minnesota. In 1913 he attended
Princeton University. On leaving, without a degree, he joined the army but,
although he undertook battle training, he never served on the Western Front in
Europe during the Great War. Upon his discharge in 1918 he moved to New York City hoping to launch a
career in advertising that would be lucrative enough to convince Zelda Sayle,
with whom he had fallen madly in love, to marry him. Initially Zelda accepted
his marriage proposal but, after some time and, despite working at an
advertising firm and writing short stories, he was unable to convince her that
he would be able to support her, leading her to break off the engagement.

Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), a semi-autobiographical
account of his undergraduate years at Princeton,was an
overnight success and at twenty four he became something of a national
celebrity. With the influx of money that the novel brought him, Zelda was
persuaded to resume their engagement and they were married at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. They became a golden couple of the Jazz Age,
living a reckless and careless high life. Much of their stormy relationship is portrayed in his
stories and novels.

In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, the story of the troubled marriage of
Anthony and Gloria Patch. This book helped to cement his
status as one of the great chroniclers and satirists of the culture of wealth,
extravagance and ambition that emerged during the affluent 1920s. ‘It was an
age of miracles,’ Fitzgerald wrote, ‘it was an age of art, it was an age of
excess, and it was an age of satire’.

The Great Gatsby (1925) was his third and his greatest novel,
although it met with mixed reviews at the time. As the Twenties drew to a
close, life became more difficult for Fitzgerald as he struggled with enormous
financial problems and Zelda’s severe mental illness. In 1930, Zelda suffered
another breakdown and was admitted to mental health clinic in Switzerland. His
wife’s condition and his lack of literary success took its toll on Fitzgerald.
After a few barren years during which there was an over indulgence in alcohol,
he published his fourth novel Tender is
the Night in 1934. It was a commercial failure. After another few years
lost to drink and depression, in 1937 Fitzgerald tried to revive his career as
freelance storywriter in Hollywood. Although he reportedly found movie work
degrading, Fitzgerald achieved modest financial, if not critical, success for
his efforts.

His final novel The Last Tycoon was unfinished at the
time of his death. He suffered a heart attack of a heart attack in 1941 at the
age of 44.Among those attending the funeral was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried
and murmured ‘the poor son-of-a-bitch,’ a line from Jay Gatsby’s funeral in The
Great Gatsby.

In 2015, a long lost short story by Fitzgerald entitled ‘Temperature’ was
discovered. This highly sad autobiographical narrative tells the story of the
failure, illness and decline of a once successful writer and his life among Hollywood
idols, while suffering lingering fevers and indulging in light-hearted romance.
The protagonist is a 31-year-old self-destructive alcoholic named Emmet Monsen,
whom Fitzgerald describes in his story as ‘notably photogenic, slender and
darkly handsome.’ It tells of his personal relationships as his health declines
with various doctors, personal assistants, and a Hollywood actress who is his
lover. ‘As for that current dodge 'No reference to any living character is
intended' — no use even trying that,’ Fitzgerald observes wryly at the
beginning of the story.

This story emphasises the fact
that F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. None of his works
received anything more than modest critical or commercial success during his
lifetime. However since his death he had gained a reputation as one of the
pre-eminent authors in the history of American literature due almost entirely
to the continuing posthumous success of The
Great Gatsby, perhaps the quintessential American novel, as well as a
definitive social history of the Jazz Age.